Your Faith Has Made You Well
by Amberlin
Summary: Lex shares a dream. Slightly disturbing.


I went to a psychiatrist once. 

He told me I was "unbalanced."

How's that for irony? The again, what I had told him had been pretty bizarre. It was just a dream, but I suppose anyone would be a little disconcerted by it. Lord knows I was. That's exactly why I had never revealed it before- not even to my mother.

However, I stupidly believed that a were suppose to be able to open up to a therapist without any sort of negative reaction. That's why everyone (_my father_) insisted that I visit one to unload my "feelings." What my dad failed to mention was that he simply wanted me to confide in someone else and leave him alone. After all, he had more pressing matters to attend to than listening to his son's asinine nightmare.

It always started the same way. I would be lying in a well-lit room on a soft red carpet, so darkly crimson that it bordered on black. It was a serene feeling that permeated through me as I lay there. There were roses surrounding me and the scent was intoxicating. I felt appeased, contented.

Then, as my mind sharpened more, I would realize that I was lying in a warm coffin. The roses were growing in through the cracks and winding around my limbs.

Weirdly enough, this still didn't peturb me. It wasn't stifling. I could breath easily and just let my mind rest.

At that point, though, I would suddenly feel two hands on my lower back. At first I try to ignore them but they soon become all I know. I detect the coldness of them even through the cloak of my thick clothing.

Right on cue, I become agitated, as if I believe these hands are trying to tell me something. I find myself clawing my way out of my seclusion of death. However, even after I've dug my way out of my grave, I sense that I am still dead inside. My heart is idle and I shiver at the quietness of my own body.

An abhorrent sense of loneliness overtakes me and I go in search of company. I begin walking through town. This town is similar to Smallville itself but more elusive in some way I can't quite explain or put my finger on. They're no colors in this world, only dark grays and blackness.

As I stand amongst the people, I observe as their cheery and enthusiastic faces begin melting. deteriorating into walking dead forms. Unhappy dead, unsatisfied dead, who have a stench of injustice dripping from their grotesque figures.

Even in my deceased state, my heart still reaches out to them, wondering why this is happening and what I can do to prevent it. It's at this precise moment that I realize, to my horror and surprise, no matter how many times I've seen this very scene, that those who are melting are the same ones who chance to touch me as they pass.

One by one they walk by, sometimes not even acknowledging my presence, grazing their fingertips over my skin.

I try to sidestep them but they still crowd around, running their hands over me and I become infuriated at them for not seeing what was happening.

Maybe they don't know. At this thought, I become uncontrollably distraught and start screaming at them. Yelling to deaf ears, becoming more and more frustrated with their oblivion.

I push them away and try to pull into myself. I believe that if I can make myself small enough, they won't be able to reach me.

But they won't stop, the healthy ones push by the decomposing ones in a now frenzied attempt to lay their hands on me. I vainly duck some, only to be touched by another pair and watch as the faces around me begin waning.

Then I start to recognize some of the people. The faces change every night and I never remember who exactly it was but the feeling I get when I first see them is something I will never forget and haunts me even on dreamless nights.

I start gasping for breath and in a futile attempt to hide, I cover my face with my hands. Crying plaintively for them to stop as I can now feel the smoothness of their skin rotting as it rakes my flesh.

In that moment of unbridled fear and terror, I detect a soft and healthy hand brush my cheek. It's neither man nor woman's and my cursed skin has no effect on it. It's unearthly and surreal. The awareness of it is startling compared to the frail and dead hands that are running all over the rest of me.

Every night I reach out to grasp it and miss, feeling it vanish from my cheek. The degenerating bodies are now forgotten as I start my desperate search for that one hand that is immune to the evil inside me. The only living and warm flesh that cannot be decimated by my abomination.

But it's gone. I push past the people now, unaware of my effect and concentrated on nothing but my search. I drive through the horde as they press into me and am reminded of the woman who approached Jesus and touched his garment to be healed.

Except I was destroying, obliterating all that came into contact with me.

The crowd seems to have multiplied and I am now forced to my knees, partly because of the frenzy that is taking place and partly because of my own lack of determination.

I sit there now as they continue they're unexplainable rush to grab at me and I no longer feel anything for them. I perceive my insides harden and almost assume that they deserve what is happening to them because of their own naivety.

And that is how I wake, with dried tears on my eyes and in an empty bed. My heartbeat is surprisingly calm and unaffected. It's during this time that I despondently wish that someone were filling the space beside me. I feel the agonizing need to watch someone, anyone, simply breath. Watch as their chest rises consistently and reassure myself that they obviously have survived me.

When I was younger, this wish was always granted. I don't know how she knew I needed her but I would always awake to her attentive eyes piercing into me. Maybe I had been screaming, or possibly crying and she had heard me. I really don't care, as long as she was there.

Then I would ease my head on her chest and listen to her steady heartbeat, letting my head rise and fall with her breaths, consoling myself on the fact that I was touching her, loving her and she was not withering under my embrace. Then I was soothed thoroughly and the dream was disregarded until the next night, when she would have to come and pacify me again. But everything was perfect when she was there.

Then she died.

I've awoken alone ever since.

I'll never forget the look on my shrink's face when I told him about my vision. That's what I said to him, that these weren't just dreams, but _visions_.

He didn't outright call me a psychopath but just awkwardly referred me to an associate of his who had more experience with people in my current "unbalanced state of mind." I took the card he gave me and promptly threw it away. I never want to see that look again. Besides, it wasn't that important anyway.

It was just a childish dream.


End file.
